


an ode (to the boy i love)

by michelllejones



Series: fear of the water [3]
Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, i don't wanna give anything away ur just gonna have to read...:), or is it...., richie tozier has a dream, tiny plot if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-10-01 21:14:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20406691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/michelllejones/pseuds/michelllejones
Summary: He has had this dream before.It never starts quite the same, but the feeling it leaves in the pit of his stomach is consistent—warm, fluttery,ethereal—he’ll wake up short of breath, heartbeat stuttering against his ribcage—corollaries of dreams like this one and all those before it.A name dances around in his head, faint like a whisper but nearly clear as day. A name that he knows is familiar, knows ismorethan that, a name that holds meaning just like the face before him and the feelings they yield. A name that Richie knows somewhere within is one he has spoken before, many a time.It plays like a mantra within his soul, a chorus of a name he knows and has known. One he refuses to forget——Eddie.





	an ode (to the boy i love)

**Author's Note:**

> here's another year old wip i decided to finish!!!! no rest for the wicked!!!!!!

He has had this dream before. 

It never starts quite the same, but the feeling it leaves in the pit of his stomach is consistent—warm, fluttery, _ethereal_—he’ll wake up short of breath, heartbeat stuttering against his ribcage—corollaries of dreams like this one and all those before it.

Now, his illusion is different from the ones before, though only in setting. Where they are usually at school or the Barrens, or maybe just walking through town, this time they are in his room. Together they lay in his bed, side by side, face to face, unsaid words dancing in the night air, hanging like cobwebs. Unreserved visages and bright eyes glinting with _something_ that makes his pulse quicken. His heart is captured in his throat, commonplace in reveries like this. 

It is a dream—he knows it is—but _God_, it feels so real. As if he’s really here with him, in his childhood bed, gazing up at him _like_ that, smiling at him like that. The fond look in his eyes, the sweet smile on his lips, the heat between them. It is all so indescribably tangible and heartbreakingly believable that when he reaches out to brush his knuckles against his cheek—the same one he has touched time and time again but failed to think anything of—that feels real, too. The prickle of his fingertips, the buzzing all along the borders of his body, the pooling fervor amid his insides. 

All of it.

It makes him feel alive.

“Rich,” a voice whispers, that voice—_his_ voice—and it has never been so clear before. For a second he thinks—hopes—that maybe, just maybe, that tonight this isn’t a dream. That this could be real, it could all be real, in this fantasy world where he has the courage to say the words he longs to—to touch and feel and hold the way he yearns to. To do all the things the sunlight prohibits, but the moon allows.

Richie leaves his knuckles against his face, the tips of his fingers grazing the corner of his mouth slightly. Everything he touches is soft and warm and when he splays his fingers out across his cheek, the entirety of his palm is enveloped in the same heat. 

His body sighs.

With it, a name dances around in his head, faint like a whisper but nearly clear as day. A name that he knows is familiar, knows is _more_ than that, a name that holds meaning just like the face before him and the feelings they yield. A name that Richie knows somewhere within is one he has spoken before, many a time. 

It plays like a mantra within his soul, a chorus of a name he knows and has known. One he refuses to forget—

—_Eddie_.

All at once, his hazy vision clears and nothing is left to imagination. Though he had known from the second he reached out, the second he touched the face parallel to his own, he is nothing if not certain he is dreaming of him—of _Eddie—of course_—it was always Eddie. 

Familiarity washes over him them, fills him with comfort and grants him the courage to whisper his name, aloud this time. “Eddie,” he exhales, as if he has been lost in the desert for years and Eddie is the oasis he has been longing for. The syllables roll off his tongue artlessly, like he was made to say it. 

(He thinks he might have been.)

A phantom touch presses against his hand then, soft and gentle in a way he is sure he has felt before, outside of this dream world his mind has created for him. No—this is veritable, a truth that cannot be argued—he knows he has felt this before: this hand and its touch and this. All of this. 

Jesus, it feels so much like Eddie, the way his eyes shine against the darkness of the room, the curve of his lips and the gentle stroke of his fingertips. How he holds Richie captive not just with his touch but with his everything, his entire being. The feeling of comfort, of safety, that falls over Richie like a blanket of shelter—as if it is impenetrable, indestructible. That nothing and no one could ever break it, so long as Eddie touches him like this, looks at him that way. 

(So long as they are together.)

The hands of an illusory clock tick on and on, every pseudo minute that passes a warning that looms over him like a shadow. Dread fills the hollow spaces in his bones as fear grabs ahold of him, shakes him violently and reminds him that none of this is real. Not Eddie, not his smile or his freckles or his eyes or this haven he has created within the void that existed before. Before Eddie, before he remembered—_before he remembered Eddie_. This space in its entirety is fictitious in the most pitiless of ways; a fragment of his own imagination. 

Suddenly, the images around him fade, and what existed before begins to seem less like a dream and more like a cruel joke, though he fights to relish in it—this fantasy he has allowed himself in the night and the night alone. But despite all his efforts, he finds himself succumbing to consciousness. 

And when his eyes flutter open, squinting against the harsh sun that filters in through his blinds, he wakes up with a hand pressed to his cheek, his own in place of where Eddie’s had been—_Dream Eddie’s_—and the space beside him is empty, abandoned, and cold—and Richie finds that he is, too.

Rolling onto his back, Richie stares at his ceiling for several seconds, only to find that it is not the off-white, stucco ceiling he has examined on a multitude of mornings like this one. Instead, he is met by a roof of a completely different texture and color. This one is stomped, an ugly cream hue, faded and ancient in its appearance. And the blinding light from before is not that of the sun, but a bedside lamp placed on the floor, where he lays in a ragged sleeping bag in lieu of his bed. 

The world around him has changed completely from the one previous, different in setting once more, but still familiar. As Richie glances around himself in mild panic, he finds that his vision is being filtered through a pair of glasses—his glasses, with smudges and finger prints all along the edges. There is a slight fracture in the middle of the left lens, result of carelessly tossing them before jumping into the quarry a while back, his mind supplies. They are cracked and dirty and a little too small for his face, too snug around his temples, but nonetheless, they are his. 

The room he is in is far bigger than his own, the window in the center larger and the walls a dissimilar color. This room is painted yellow, where his is (was?) blue, a full sized bed in its center instead of a twin crammed against the wall. There are movie posters in place of his of rockstars and models, because this is not Richie’s room. No, this is Bill’s—Bill Denbrough’s. His friend. His best friend. 

Or rather, _one of_ his best friends. 

It becomes apparent then that Richie is not alone like he had been before, in fact he is far from. On the floor alongside him, spread out in their own respective sleeping bags, are his friends; all six of them. He cannot make out any of their faces, what with the dimly lit room and how they have seemingly retreated underneath the cover of their makeshift beds, but he doesn't have to see them to know who they are. There is a feeling deep within that tells him he knows exactly who is in this room with him. 

After a moment of uninterrupted silence, Richie can only guess that everyone else is fast asleep. Or so he supposes, until the the person nearest him grumbles something under their breath and kicks the covers from their body. Upon closer inspection (done so by shuffling across the wooden floor in his noisy sleeping bag in order to move closer), he discovers that the restless body mere inches from him is Eddie—the same Eddie from before, an odd thought chimes from the depths of his mind. Something about this Eddie is different, Richie thinks, but he isn’t sure why he thinks it. Because Eddie is just Eddie, the same Eddie he has always been, the same Eddie he always will be. 

Against his own volition, Richie reaches out to poke This Eddie with his forefinger. Then his mouth starts moving, and it’s almost like he is stuck in a body he has no control over, following a script he did not know existed. 

“Eds,” he hisses much too loud for a room full of sleeping people, “you awake?” A question he already knows the answer to but feels the need to ask anyway. Better safe than sorry. 

The boy beside him lays perfectly still, doesn’t even budge when Richie nudges him with his finger another time. Aside from the noisy puff of air that exits his mouth, he makes no sudden movements to appear awake. Almost as if he’s ignoring Richie entirely, which makes Richie feel like an ass, though he knows better than to buy into Eddie’s charade. 

“I know you’re awake,” Richie whispers into the night, knowing full well that Eddie won’t respond to that either.

But to his surprise, Eddie rolls onto his back and turns his head to the side. Fixes Richie with a stern look. 

“Do you need something?” He sighs, lips pulled back and eyebrows raised. An alarmingly familiar expression, Richie assesses.

Folding his hands across his stomach, he looks up to the ceiling and analyzes Eddie’s question. Does he need something? Not particularly, or so he thinks, until his lips move inadvertently. They form words he had no recollection of processing as he tilts his head to the side and whispers: “I don’t hate it.”

As soon as they leave his mouth, somewhere in the very back of his mind, a dam breaks. His consciousness is filled to the brim with memories, of teasing remarks and snickers, of exasperated sighs and tired expressions, of himself and Eddie. 

“What?” Eddie asks, not even bothering to keep his voice quiet. Confusion etches itself over each and every one of his features. 

Richie gestures to Eddie’s hair. “The haircut. I don’t actually hate it,” he continues to whisper, as if he is afraid someone will hear him. “I’m sorry I was such a shithead about it earlier.” The apology sounds strange, like Richie has heard it before—feels strange in the similar way this night does, as if he has been _here_ before. 

For a moment that stretches into a while, Eddie lays completely still, his face towards Richie but his gaze cast downwards. He looks contemplative, not sure whether or not to accept Richie’s apology or dismiss him.

All the while, Richie is fixated on him, his eyes not once straying from his face. It is odd how clearly he can see him even in the dark—the freckles along the slope of his nose, the dip of his cupid’s bow just above the heart-shaped center of his mouth, the pink of his lips that are generous, unyielding. 

The things that make Eddie, Eddie; trademarks of his disposition.

In them Richie sees more than his eyes can show him; warm, sticky air in the midst of summer, the sun as it beats down on their shoulders, reflections of light bouncing off of their wet skin; a chorus of laughter dancing with the leaves in the autumn wind; faces split with blinding grins, lips spread wide and glowing. Tired eyes, frosted cheeks at the end of a long winter day, only to be warmed by the sweet taste of hot chocolate. Shared secrets in the dead of night, whispers of confidentiality between two friends. Safety behind closed doors, in broad daylight. 

Similar reminisces come to Richie in flashes, his eyes focused solely on Eddie and Eddie alone; they watch him as he fiddles with his lower lip, picks at it with his thumb and his forefinger. They watch as he blows out a puff of air, rolls his eyes and props himself up on each of his elbows. They watch as he opens his mouth, and words tumble out, his sentence one Richie had not anticipated: “That’s not why I’m upset.”

And now, it is Richie’s turn to be confused. If not the teasing comments about his hair, then what else could he be upset about? The catalog of memories in Richie’s brain don’t supply any other possible wrongdoings—recent ones, anyhow—and Richie is left to stare at Eddie with pinched brows. 

To which Eddie, in his already vexed state, lets out a frustrated huff and flops his back against the floor. “Are you _really_ going to make me say it?” He grumbles, eyes squeezed shut in—hesitation? fear? anger?—, fists balled up at his sides. 

This part doesn’t seem so familiar—more like a daydream he had once, a very long time ago, that never came true, never saw the light of day. The memory of it is so far away, and Richie finds that his mouth is no longer moving on its own accord—he has regained its full control, and he isn’t quite sure what he is meant to do with it. 

However, it doesn’t matter, because Eddie speaks instead, impatience getting the best of him. “Why didn’t you tell me you applied to UCLA?” the question tumbles out of his mouth, every word strung together to create one monstrous one. Still, his eyes are shut, as if he is afraid when he opens them he won’t see Richie, anymore, but something else entirely. Richie only wonders what it is he is so afraid of seeing… 

The question—though random—is valid. Why _didn’t_ Richie tell Eddie? There must be a reason, he thinks, filing through his brain to find one. But he comes up empty-handed. 

“I didn’t think I’d get in,” he replies, and it isn’t necessarily a lie—he had been afraid of getting rejected. Terrified, really. How humiliating it would have been to get rejected from the only school he truly wanted to go to; how embarrassing it would be to have to tell his friends—who had expectedly gotten accepted to every school they applied to—that he would have to go to junior college. That they would have to leave him behind. 

Apprehensively, he drags his gaze over to Eddie, who is no longer laying on his back with his eyes shut tight, but instead, sat up entirely with his eyes so dangerously big and wide that Richie startles a bit at the sight of him. 

“Bullshit,” he spits, sounding angry but hurt, too. He stands—sits?—his ground, doesn’t move his glare from Richie’s face once. 

Meanwhile, Richie’s stomach is doing front flips and back hand springs and somersaults all around his abdominal cavity. Having lost control of his muscles, his jaw drops open, and his mouth moves as if to speak, but no words come out. There is a weight in his chest—as if someone dropped a boulder on top of him—and the longer he looks at Eddie, the heavier it gets and the harder it is to breathe. He feels caught; as if he has committed a crime. The look on Eddie’s face tells him that he must have: desperate look in his eyes, slanted eyebrows and a frown set so deep it looked almost permanent. A look that made Richie ask himself, What have I done? 

“Eds, I—” he finds his voice finally, but it only serves to upset Eddie further. Instead of responding, he stands abruptly and steps around the other sleeping bags on the ground—around Bev and Stan and Mike—and walks out of the room. 

“Eddie!” Richie hisses after him, but he doesn’t stop, and so he scrambles out of his own sleeping bag to go after him. 

But Eddie persists—he walks across the hall and down the stairs and then, just as Richie lasts the bottom steps, opens the front door. Spinning on his heels, he makes to shut the door right in Richie’s face, but Richie is faster, catches it with his palms. 

“What the hell are you doing?” He asks, careful not to speak above a whisper, but the strain in his voice makes it crack like a twelve year old’s. He walks out on the Denbrough’s porch—shivering when a breeze passes through—and closes it gently. All the while, his eyes never leave Eddie’s face, expressing a million and one different emotions all at once. Anger, hurt, sadness, frustration, desperation—too many to count or keep track of. 

“Going for a walk,” Eddie fumes, stomping down the stairs and onto the sidewalk. 

Richie—despite not having one athletic bone in his body—keeps up with him; his feet more than determined to carry him across the entire town if he has to, ready to follow Eddie every and anywhere. 

“At 2am? Come on, slow down,” he breathes, extending his legs in long strides to match Eddie’s pace. “We don’t all run a seven minute mile, Speedy Gonzales!” He huffs and puffs—mostly from the anxiety bubbling up in his stomach—but Eddie marches on. Folds his arms tight across his chest, turns his chin up and walks with a defying perseverance to get away from Richie. That should deter him, and it does, slightly, but Richie isn’t going to give up that easily. This is too important. Eddie is too important. 

“Just go back, Rich,” Eddie stops and calls over his shoulder. Which is a mistake, because Richie takes this as a chance to reach out and grab the tail of Eddie’s t-shirt and yanks him backward. “What the fuck?” he blurts, loudly, forgetting himself and the time. Glares at Richie ferociously as he jerks himself free of Richie’s grasp. 

“Yeah, what the fuck?” Richie bites back, his confusion and anxiety molding together to create immense frustration. “What in the fresh fuck, Eds?—”

“—Don’t call me—”

Richie doesn’t let him finish, raises his voice, “—you’re going for a walk in the middle of the night? ‘Cause I didn’t tell you I applied to some stupid school in California? ‘Cause I didn’t want to look like an idiot if I got rejected? ‘Cause I didn’t want you to think I was a fucking loser? Is that what you want to hear? That I’m so scared—shitless, I’m scared shitless!—that I’m not going to get accepted and I’m just gonna have to sit back and wave you and everyone else goodbye next year?” He pauses—aware that he is shouting and should lower his voice if he doesn’t want the cops called—and the air is filled with nothing but he and Eddie’s breathing; rough and shuddering. 

The anger in Eddie’s face is no longer visible, and when he starts to speak, to say Richie’s name in that soft voice that he uses when things get Serious, Richie speaks right over him again. 

“I only told Bev because she was the one who made me send the application.” He admits in a much calmer tone. “I was waiting to get a letter back. That’s why I didn’t tell you. I didn’t think it was such a big deal,” he mutters the last bit with a shrug. 

Eddie scoffs around a humorless laugh. “Not a big deal,” he repeats, shaking his head. “Rich, it’s a _huge_ fucking deal. California is your dream. You think I don’t know that?” The hurt is back—though it never exactly left—and Richie’s heart plummets beneath his ribcage at the sound. “I could never think you were a loser. Ever. Are you kidding? You’re my best friend. I admire you, Rich,” soft, too soft; words so warm that Richie can feel it on his skin. 

Heart slamming in his stomach, Richie’s shoulders fall with a heavy exhale. 

“I just thought…” Eddie continues, looking down at his conjoined hands, “we told each other everything. And it felt like… you didn’t want me to know. Like it was a huge secret you were gonna keep from me forever.” 

“Eddie,” Richie sighs, stepping toward him slowly, “you’re the only person that knows that I like My Little Pony. You know my parent’s birthdays. You’ve seen my bare ass—”

“—we all have—” Eddie interjects, nose scrunched. 

“—you know everything about me there is to know,” Richie assures earnestly, “I didn’t tell you or anyone else because I’m just scared, I guess,” he says, sighing. 

Their eyes meet. Another breeze passes, leaving a trail of goosebumps on Richie’s arms and his exposed legs—he forgot he was in his boxers until just now. Silence elapses between them, as Eddie thinks of what to say next. Richie can practically see his wheels turning as he searches for the right thing to say in response. 

Finally, he comes to a decision. Says, “me, too,” in a tiny but firm voice. 

Richie raises his eyebrows, laughs disbelievingly. “_You’re_ scared? Of what?” Eddie is fearless—Richie’s seen it time and time again. With _It_, with his mother, with Henry Bowers and every other shitty thing this town has thrown at him. 

Then, Eddie falters. Looks regretful, like he wishes he hadn’t said anything at all. Yet, he relents. “Losing you, I guess,” he answers in a tone so sad Richie’s heart breaks almost entirely at the sound of it. “I don’t want you to forget about me.” 

Richie’s response is immediate; his chest collapses as he scoffs incredulously. How could he even think that? Forgetting him would be like forgetting how to tie his shoes or eat or speak—too important to ever be forgotten. “Eddie, m’love,” he says, maybe too affectionately, “I’ll never forget you.” And he means it, swears it, right there in front of Eddie in the middle of the night on the empty sidewalk of the neighborhood they grew up in, spent the last seventeen years riding their bikes on, drawing in chalk, getting scrapes, and then it all fades away. 

“Promise?” Eddie says, quietly, a question for Richie’s and Richie only. 

“Cross my heart,” is Richie’s ready reply, as he drags his pointer finger across his heart in the shape of an x. Hasn’t even noticed that he and Eddie are now standing in some kind of black abyss. 

There are no houses and no street and no cars and no trees. Everything has disappeared, leaving just him and Eddie, on a blank canvas, staring at one another, promising to never forget each other. One second, it is them and them alone, in a world where only they exist, and then, in a split second, there is nothing and—

—Richie’s eyes open for the third time. 

Above him, the ceiling he remembers—stucco, modern—, beside him the large window that convinced him to buy the place, grey walls decorated in posters with his own face on them—_Richie Tozier is back as Resident Trashmouth this fall!_—awards and plaques on overcrowded shelves, around him possessions that he remembers. For a short, fleeting moment, he is disoriented; from being jerked out of one reality and catapulted into the next. A longing, a burning desire, a faint memory of what feels like love, lingers in his chest. Its origin is unknown, but the feeling is far from unfamiliar. For as long as he can remember, every morning he awakes, it is there—the hollow ache in his chest, the nagging feeling that he is missing something. But the answer never reveals itself, and as he blinks himself awake, leaves his bed, and pads around his room in his underwear, his mind is consumed only by mundane morning tasks, long forgotten the memory of a boy he only knows in his dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> wasn't that fun??!??!
> 
> no one asked for this but it's okay because i did. i hope it was bearable and coherent at least. 
> 
> let me know in the comments how u liked it! or if u hate it and want to chase me down with pitchforks and torches! if u want to hit me, hit the kudos button instead! every kudos = one punch <3


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